As we have considered the political options following the Gaza war.
There has been so much of a focus on recognition of Palestine and the two state solution that there has been a general draw of the relevance of the conversation about an idea which until the 7th of October, I would say has been steadily gaining ground, which was the idea of establishing a binational state as the only justice sustainable solution in which Israelis and Palestinians and anyone else for that matter, would live with equal rights within the boundaries of an undivided state.
And this has been one idea that has found tremendous traction among certain circles and been widely criticised by other circles as not feasible. The question is whether it's still in the discussion today, but I thought it would be of great interest to us all. And by your turn out tonight you're proving this point to revisit the question of the binational state.
There are bound to be jokes made at some point the evening about a typo that fit into our poster, which originally announced it to be the prospects for a bi polar state. I promise that is one occasion which Freud would have had a picnic to bring back. But we chose two people who have come to the question of the binational state from very different starting points. Both are united in a common project of reassessing Israeli history.
The new historians each has a very independent voice, quite different from the other. I would describe Ilan Puppis approach to the binational state as one very much shaped by his own internationalist worldview, in which he has been consistently anti nationalism of any stripe in pursuit of a more humane and juster solution, not just for Israel Palestine. So I would say it is a lifelong conviction of the internationalist Ilan Typekit for obvious name.
I think it really is an evolution in his own political thinking that has followed the breakdown of the hopes of the Oslo Accords to try and resolve the differences between Israel and Palestine through a two state solution.
But he was in recent years very firmly of the view that the scope for two states was now virtually by the settler movement and the infrastructure that has been laid to provide for their needs and security by an Israeli state that never really showed a commitment to a two state solution to make that a reality. And so by default, we are now in a situation of one state give given each of them 25 minutes. To address you, I am only going to let them know when they about 5 minutes left.
I am going to keep my questions to a minimum because I know you're going to have so many of your own. All that remains is for me to ask you to give. Thunderously warm welcome to Avi, Shane and Ilan. One way to prepare for this talk, I went down to the Natural History Museum to look at the dodo, and the dodo was discovered by European sailors towards the end of the 16th century in the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. The last confirmed sighting of the dodo was in 1662.
Since then, he has been extinct. So when I arrived to the case with the dodo, I saw two French schoolgirls taking notes and I said to them, Had you heard of the dodo before you came here? And they said, Yes. And I said, What do you call them in French? And they said, Said Dodo. So I knew that the Oxford dodo has an internationally visible profile. But that's by the by. What is significant is that the dodo was a flightless bird. Even when he was alive, he couldn't fly. It couldn't take off.
And he must be wandering by now. What's the connection between the dodo and the film? This seminar series, which is political options after the Gaza War. The connect, the link. The connection is that some years ago, Maggie Hassan recorded the debate in the Oxford Union and for Al-Jazeera. And he turned to me and he said, Professor Schley, is the two state solution still alive? And I said, No, it's dead. It's as dead as a note.
It's as dead as the Oxford dodo, whom I visit regularly in the Natural History Museum. So ever since then, in my eccentric mind, there's always been a link between the two state solution and the state of the Oxford dodo. So that's why I went to the Natural History Museum. And I went to the glass cabinet and I tried to talk to him. No answer. I pulled faces to make him laugh. No reaction. I talk gently from the glass. Still no response to blunder and no response whatsoever.
So it is my solemn duty to announce that the two state solution is as dead as the Oxford tentative. And this is my starting point that the two state solution is not viable. It has become fashionable in recent years to say that the two state solution is dead. I would argue that the two state solution was never born. But I would like to come back to that. First, I want to say a few words about the new history, because we have with us Iran, who is a trailblazer, a trailblazer of the new history.
And lest you think there is no connection between the two, I suggest that there is a connection between the new history and the subject of our debate today. And that is the solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians depends on the character and the nature of the two entities. And this is where the the new history is relevant. In 1984, Iran submitted the Dphil thesis. He was a student of the Middle East centre, his two supervisors.
So arbitrarily and logically he submitted a thesis on Britain and the Arab-Israeli conflict 1948 to 1961. I was the external examiner because I was attending university at the time. This was a radical revisionist thesis which stood the conventional wisdom on the Arab-Israeli conflict, only to in particular, it questioned the Zionist claim that towards the end of the British mandate in Palestine, with an end in sight to.
Clients who invade Palestine upon expiry of the mandate in order to strangle the Jewish state at birth. Ilan Using British records, Israeli records, primary Arabic sources concluded that there was a case against Britain. Is the Palestine mandate approach its inglorious end?
But it is not what the Zionists were saying. On the contrary, that Britain accepted the inevitable emergence of a Jewish state, but Britain colluded with its ally, King Abdullah of Jordan, to abort the birth of a Palestinian state. All the ideas of the new history were present in one form or another. In that the field of the thesis I have probably supervised or examined more than 50 theses in my time. But this thesis had the most profound impact on my intellectual trajectory.
It's what made me a new historian. In 1988, three books were published one by one based on his thesis, one by Benny Morris, The Birth of a Palestinian Refugee Problem and Naval Collusion across the Jordan. King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine. The fourth book by singer Lapointe called The Birth of Peace will Withstand Reality and Soon. Hoffler spent a year at Harvard, and Professor Rogen was his recent research assistant.
Between us, we launched a frontal attack on all the myths that have come to surround the birth of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war. The reaction in Israel was very hostile. Why were Israelis so angry? And I think the answer is because the new history went to the core of Israel's perception of itself as a liberal, peace loving country. Although we all lumped together as the new historians politically, we had very different positions. Debbie Morris was a Zionist, Ilan was an anti-Zionist.
Ilan regarded Israel as a colonial project, which was not at any time legitimate within any borders, and I was in the middle between the two of them. I thought that Israel, within its 67 borders was in addition, the Egyptian, but the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green line was illegitimate. So I was an advocate of the two state solution and I was a cheerleader for the Oslo Accord. And I may say that I received a lot of abuse for my views.
My wife and daughter regarded me, denounced me as an apologist for the Israeli state. But my views have changed over time, and I no longer make a distinction between Israel proper in the occupied territories. I see Israel as an aggressive settler colonial state is a violent, ethno nationalist state that is becoming increasingly genocidal and enclosed and closely tied to American imperialism. So after 40 years of research and reflection, I've ended up with even puppy wars in 1984.
And now let me go back to the two state solution. It's never been a realistic solution for two reasons. One is because Israel is addicted to oil. You represent any mainstream of political opinions in Israel. I'm so sorry, but you'll have to go. Got it. Thank you. What do you think? Survive about? Olmert said Israel is addicted to occupation. After 1967, Israel chose occupation over peace.
Could we have more volume on that? We speak out as much as possible. Just a little closer to want to get you. Israel chose occupation over peace, and Israel used peace negotiations as a smokescreen to advance its colonial project. There was the so-called peace process, but the peace process was all process and no peace. It was a charade. It was worse than the charade because it gave these just the cowboys needed to pursue the aggressive Zionist colonial project in the occupied territories.
The platform of the Likud for the 1977 election. Statehood for between the river and the sea, there will be only Jewish sovereignty. The In the Iran speech in 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu said that he would accept this armed Palestinian state under all sorts of restrictions. It was the only time he mentioned the possibility of a Palestinian state. But his life's mission has been to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and the guidelines of his president gafni sake.
Only Jews or Jews. Sorry, Jews have an exclusive right to self-determination in the entire land of Israel. One of the reason why I argue that the two state solution was never born was because America never seriously pushed Israel into this into this kind of settlement. State solution is a convenient formula for American leaders and other Western leaders, but it's vacuous. America used to pose as the honest broker, but it's not an honest broker.
It's a dishonest broker because of its partiality to Israel. It's more of as the Israelis lawyer than is an honest broker. America uses military aid and diplomatic protection. America has used the veto in the Security Council 46 times to defeat resolutions that were not to Israel's liking during the current war. America defeated one resolution of the Security Council, which is supported by 13 members, with only Britain abstaining.
So America alone defeated a cease fire resolution, which we could have banned. And now Algeria is about to present another resolution for a ceasefire, and America has already indicated it's likely to veto it. Joe Biden has been in power for three and a half years and we didn't hear a peep out of him about a two state solution or indeed any solution. He was perfectly content with Israel continuing as a colonial overlord, and Biden supplies his Israel with munitions and arms.
And then he complains that Israel makes excessive use of these arms. He's going to give a two state solution is to impose the Palestinian Authority on Gaza and have some sort of a few Bantustans that would amount to a state. It would be nothing. But maybe this is in the worse imperialist tradition of imposing on the local populations. What is the solution in period solutions that completely ignore the rights and aspirations?
Surely the people of Gaza and of the West must be left to choose their own government when this ghastly all comes together. The only two alternatives for the day after one is BBC Alternative and BBC alternative for the aftermath of this war is that everything remains the same on the West Bank, with Israel enjoying complicit people in the Palestinian Authority, weak Palestinian and discredited the Palestinian Authority, continuing to act as the subcontractor for Israeli security.
Permanent Israeli security control over Gaza, limited self-government by the people of Gaza, provided they are not hostile to Israel.
I doubt that by the end that by the time Bebe is finished, there will be anyone in Gaza who is not hostile to Israel and no return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza because it would be a unified Palestinian leadership which would strengthen the claim that the call for the Palestinian statehood and definitely a no and absolute no to any notion of Palestinian statehood. This is unacceptable. The other alternative is a very national state.
And the title of this seminar is Is the Binational State Possible after the 7th of October? And the answer to this question is no. Because of the opposition from Zionists and settler colonialism backed by American imperialism. But a bi national state is the only democratic solution to this conflict. I therefore advocate today one democratic state from the river to the sea with equal rights for all citizens, regardless of religion and ethnicity.
And I am not talking about what is politically possible. I'm talking about morality and international law. And on 99% of the issues in dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, international law is on the side of the Palestinians. Now, much work has been done on the one state solution. Ali Abunimah, rather commie Iran. Jeff Halper in Israel, Jeff Harper, the director of the Israeli and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
And he and Palestinians have formed a group which is called the One Democratic State Campaign here in Britain. There is an affiliated group called and One Democratic State initiative. For me, the key to any solution is equality, political equality for all people within this entity. The core of this solution for me is not peace, but it's equality. The other essential requirement is that the state would be secular. In other words, that religious affiliation would not affect in any way.
For better or worse, the rights of each individual. In other words, my one state solution is the antithesis of the Zionist colonial project, and the impulse for change is not going to come from within Israel. Israel would have to be coerced into accepting this outcome. It's clear that this noble vision will not be possible after immediately after the guns fall silent in Gaza. Does it have any chance of realisation in the longer term at any point in the future?
I don't know the answer to that, but I mean hope my experience as an Arab Jew leads me to believe that antagonism between Muslims and Jews is not inevitable. It is not an inescapable is not preordained. I grew up as a boy in Baghdad, and my fight for my family in the Muslim Jewish coexistence was not a remote dream. It was the everyday reality and I would like to recreate that. And this experience has enabled me to seek out of the box to think about a better future for our region, for everybody.
So I live in hope. And hope is one previous Israeli speech speakers in the seminar said Hope is a desire to achieve something, to achieve what you know is probably not achievable, but the struggle to achieve it is energising. Thank you for listening. It's great to be here and to see so many people. Thank you, Harvey, for your kind references. It's reminded me that it was 40 years ago when we just started, and now I understand why I decided to retire to keep it simple.
And that was really a long time ago. I would like in my contribution to distinguish between what I think is an unfolding reality, not just since the 7th of October, but actually from the beginning of this century, and talk about this unfolding reality.
As a scholar, as as an academic, not as a political activist or as someone who is part of that story, but really share with you certain observations about a certain process that I think is taking place and is very relevant to the topic not only of this meeting, but of your serious all together and distinguished between that observation and shared with you, as Abbie did, some ideas about what I would have liked to unfold in the future.
So the difference between examining a reality, whether you like it or not, and talking about the reality you would have liked to to unfold, I think is very important in these discussions. And the kind of reality that I think is unfolding is is difficult to to to articulate because these are trends or indicators of something bigger that is going to happen.
But I think that there has matured to such an extent that they feel secure enough certain to talk about, maybe even predict, if you want, how they will fused together into very monumental, I think, a transformation in the reality in Israel Palestine, where it wouldn't matter that much whether we are for one state, two states or three states.
And while my vision is not at all far from an obvious vision, in fact, I certainly would I would articulate it probably in the same way of the I think it's important to look at the trends that or indicators that in my mind are bringing a certain epoch, certain period in the history of modern Palestine to an end. The Zionist hysteria, I think we are witnessing a very clear indication to the beginning of the end of the Zionist project.
If you want the end of Israel as we know it, the end of the Zionist project and the events of the 7th of October only accelerated and accentuate these developments or trends that, as I mentioned, had already started at the beginning of the this century, and maybe some of them even before the beginning of this century, of the analysis of such an idea that an epoch or a certain period comes to an end, of course, raises also the question of what would replace the Zionist project in Palestine.
But I think it's very important to convince people that this is not and believe me, I may differ from them. This is not about the wishful thinking and talking about a certain vision that we would have liked to have happen but we don't think will happen in our lifetime and so on. But rather, as an historian, I believe that actually these disintegration and collapses of ideological regimes usually happen faster than we think.
It's like a war that has a correct cracks in it, and you warn people that the cracks of quite wide. But when the cracks would be wide enough, the world would suddenly collapse. Look at the way people try to understand when and if, if and when the Soviet Union would come to an end. If and when would the Iranian Shah regime come to an end? If and when would apartheid South Africa come to an end? And you.
And see, it's almost like you have something in a slow motion, slow movement, and then suddenly nobody is really fully prepared when it happens. And I really believe that we should be taking this into account, especially, I think, the Palestinian national movement has to take it into account because it would be required to have a structure and a consensus and the unity that it does not possess today in order to fill the vacuum that such a collapse would leave behind.
So it's very important to strategize and it's very difficult to strategize when you are genocidal in Gaza, when you are oppressed in the West Bank, when you are discriminated against as citizens of Israel, and when you are refugees dwelling in a camp, but nonetheless you don't have any other option and you have to be ready because if you are not ready any, as Paul Marks told us, any vacuum is going to be filled in,
not necessarily by positive forces and not necessarily by very dominant forces, which we would be a perpetuated collective fear for a very long time. So I think this is an important discussion to ask whether one likes the idea that the Zionist project is come to an end, whether one dreads the idea of a design. This project comes to an end. It doesn't matter. You have to understand that this is now the name of the game and therefore.
And with this I agree with Avi. Not only the two state solution is that the whole discourse of the American foreign policy sounds so anachronistic. The Biden administration is is really suffocating and and trying to reignite a dead process. It's like trying to ignite a dead car without fuel and without electricity and hoping somehow that it would move.
This is shows us that the political elites, especially in the global north, that are involved in the case of Palestine, are using a vocabulary and the set of presumptions and assumptions that are totally irrelevant to the reality on the ground.
And at least I'm optimistic about a certain different discussion in the future because the civil society or those in the civil societies in the global north which are involved in the question of Palestine, definitely use a different look and definitely have a different agenda than the diplomats or the politicians who are involved generally or cynically. Doesn't matter in the so-called peace process. In many ways, I don't think it could have been otherwise.
And I'm saying it as someone who is fully aware that the Zionist movement salvaged the lives of Jews, including of my parents, and unfortunately, as they later would say, put it in his seminal work, the Question of Palestine, the salvage operation of Jews and their protection against antisemitism very quickly turned into what he called at the time a project of accumulation and displacement.
The Zionist wanted to accumulate land, immigration, power and displace with this the power of that accumulation, displace the indigenous people of Palestine. And this began very early on and very early on was an organic essential part of the Zionist project.
Now, maybe in the 16 or 17 century, such a project would have succeeded, maybe in a different era where such actions of displacement or even genocide were tolerated by the Western society and were not properly defeated by the indigenous people of the Americas or Australia, New Zealand. Maybe if that was the people, that was the era, Zionism would have maybe thrived.
But in the late 19th century and during the 20th century, in the 21st century, the idea that you can somehow build a Jewish national homeland against the will of millions of people, and that despite the fact that you have extent, so many of them, so many of them are still part of the homeland and a part of the resistance movement, and you will need all the time to impose your will on them by force, by violence, by ethnic cleansing. And as we have seen recently, also by genocidal policies.
This is not going to work. This is not that we mean, by the way, that this is something that is going to unfold. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Unfortunately, the beginning of an end can be a long historical period, but we are beginning to see the indication that this is happening.
And this is a very worrying moment, by the way, because as we know from the regime, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa and others, when they are under the danger of disintegrating or disappearing, they become particularly ruthless and violent and fierce.
And I think that what we are going to see, unfortunately in this this I don't think, overpromising you that you don't know, but I'm very, very fearful about the next year or two as far as the Israeli policies, not only towards the Palestinians in Gaza, but towards those in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and inside Israel. This is not going to change in any dramatic way. In fact, I'm afraid this is going to be far, far worse.
But I do see the maturation of the processes which I enumerate here as a kind of a light in the end of the tunnel. If you want the dawn after a very dark night. So I'm not trying to say that what we are seeing now is something that we all should oppose in every way possible.
But I'm just saying that if we for a moment can see beyond the the the now and the tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, I do think that we are seeing something dramatic change in my mind for the positive, for a better reality, for a better future for both Jews and Arabs. But I know that a lot of people would disagree with this sentiment, but I hope at least that they would agree that these are realistic. This is a realistic analysis of the process that is going on.
So let me talk about these invitation. I think I have altogether seven, but I'm sure there will have time for that soon to come. Just cinema near you who spoke about this? The first process is the implosion of the Israeli society.
From what I think many of you are aware that before the 7th of October, Israel was undergoing a civil war, a proper civil war, not in the sense of people were shooting at each other, but it did create two societies that had very, very little in common, and they were willing to either go to demonstrations in the streets, but also to totally defame and negate the other side.
I do not remember any time in the history of Israel where these two communities felt so alien towards one another talking on them in terms of the enemy, the traitors, blaming each other for all that is happening. For a moment they forgot to blame the Palestinians, which they usually do, and they blamed each other. Now, I think that you can describe it as what I said in one of my articles, is the struggle between the state of Israel and the state of Judea.
The state of Judea is the state of settlement of the settlers in the West Bank. It's first it looked like a marginal phenomenon in Israeli politics. But not only did it grow in numbers, but 700,000 to settlers in the West Bank, though it did not only grow in number, they became a force to reckon with inside this. And a lot of the young Israelis lean towards the world of these messianic Zionist Jews who are no more a marginal force.
Not only this is proven by their prominent position in the government, but far more important is their prominent position in the Army, in the Secret Service, in the civil service. They are beginning to control Israel and the state of Israel.
You can call it the state of Tel Aviv. If you want this idea that you can still have an apartheid state, but nonetheless pluralistic, that respect a lot of rights apart from the Palestinian rights, the tolerates an occupation and believes or tries to convince itself that this is temporary. But all in all, that they have built a society that can be part of the community of civilised nation, this kind of Israel that still exists and is still fighting. For its life is this Lucy is losing.
And and ironically, you would have thought that the events of the 7th of October would give it some impetus that its way of looking at reality would sound more realistic than the messianic one. But judging by all the service that we have and I don't I didn't want the service to know it, the young soldiers that come back and the reserve soldiers that a genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza are far more citizens of the state of Judea than there are citizens of the state of Israel.
And and the state of Judea that would take over from the state of Israel is not a viable political project. The second, no less important process is the economic one must in macroeconomic terms. Israel is doing very well. If you look at the record of Israel in macroeconomic terms, that is the GDP and its performance during the crisis of 2008, during the crises of the of COVID 19, it looks like a very viable and vibrant economy.
But if you look at micro economy, you can see that this is not working with the gap between the haves and the have nots have never been as wide as it is now. The number of Israelis that joined the the people under the poverty line is huge and it grows exponentially. 20% of the Israelis pay 80% of the texts, and many of them already before the 7th of October began to dislocate or relocate, rather themselves and their capital outside of Israel.
They stopped for a while because they have this DNA in them, which I recognise as an Israeli. When there is a war suddenly to come back to the warm embrace of the of the nation. But the money is again on the way out with the people. And remember, these are people from European origin, the European passport with professions that can easily be reignited elsewhere. The third indicator is the total failure of the army to defend its citizens and the total failure of the government to provide basic.
Until this very moment, the Israeli government is unable to provide the basic necessary services for the people whose families were killed, abducted, wounded. Also, the 250,000 or so people who were dislocated either from the south or from the north, the government is non-existent. The civil society there is doing its best to provide and it does provide. So that's not a very good indicator for a viable state.
In fact, this is usually indicated in the literature, at least for a failed state, when the when the regime or the government does not provide for the citizens and the civil society takes over, which sounds very nice and voluntary. This means that the state is not functioning and the Israeli state is not going to function better in the future given the quality of its politicians. And since the force indicator is the discourse about the future, and I think that's very important.
I'm not saying that the that's the word is mightier than the sword. The keyboard is mightier than the sword. I do realise that everything that is said is as important as everything that is being done, but I think discourses are important and the basic discourse of the Israeli political system, the one we will see in the next Israeli elections. It's quite incredible. And I've looked for a different historical example and couldn't find it.
You have, from left to right Israeli politicians, gurus, pundits, intellectuals talking about the future in only one way. Our vision for the future is 50 years of war, bloodshed, violence. Nobody likes us from the north. They will always try to attack us. The Palestinians will always try to kill us. We might have a normalisation agreement with Saudi Arabia, but this is not going to in any way downsize the army or our need all the time, every few years to be involved in the bloody conflict.
Now, in the 21st century, for a certain younger generation, even the the one like in Israel, which is very thoroughly indoctrinated from cradle to grave, even for that generation, this vision is quite frightening and is not very promising and does not necessarily create a sense of steadfastness towards the future.
This is not a discourse are going to hear from young people today in Israel because of what they call the war, but it will eventually, eventually affect a younger generation with no prospect. Just apart from the prospect of what is happening now in Gaza, not only of Gaza, from the Israeli perspective, not of what's happening to the Palestinians, what happens to the young Israelis.
The fifth indicators is if I do this in the right kind of formula, I would say is the move in the BDS idea from the BND to this liquid state. What I mean by this, as you probably know, the BDS campaign is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. That is an informal campaign. It's not a formal campaign, and it is slated two different kinds of actions.
It doesn't have the same kind of impact or the same kind of nature everywhere, but the whole idea is the B and D, if you want the boycott divestment, is that the civil society this that is disappointed by the lack of action by the governments is involved in boycotting and divestment from Israel and hoping that this is a pressure that eventually would bring a change to the reality on the ground. And this hasn't happened yet. The BMD is not enough, it's very clear.
But you can begin, I think, to see the move towards the SC, towards the sanction it began. And I think as much as many of us maybe like me, were disappointed a bit with the ruling of the ICJ on Gaza that it did not order an immediate ceasefire, but Israel amounts to to prove that it doesn't genocide the people in Gaza. Nonetheless, this is a landmark. This is an important landmark because institutions such as the ICJ and the ICC are the bridge between the society and the government.
And it's very possible that the young people who marched in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions around the world. The global north and the global South for Israel could be the politicians of tomorrow, of the future. So I would I would like to say that there are indicators in the way some politicians in some countries, definitely in the Global South, but also in the global north, are talking that we are not that far from sanctions on Israel.
And the beginning was the bedroom assumption on the spare parts for the F-35 and in China's refusal to continue to provide the Israelis. Another element which is important for the for the missile. I don't want to bother you with military technicalities, but it is more in the S department than the being. The sixth indicator is the change in the Jewish communities around the world, especially in the United States, especially among the younger generation of Jews.
The fact that the only important lobby now for Israel in the United States, the important one, are the Christian Zionists, is a very important development. You cannot base the international legitimacy of the Jewish state just on the theological and eschatological vision of Christian Zionists, who still believe that the state of Israel is the proof that Jesus Christ started that for 1000 years or less.
This works definitely for some Americans, no doubt, and some people even in Britain and definitely in Scandinavia. But this is not a pillar on which you can build the kind of legitimacy that Israel enjoyed when Jewish communities were fully recruited as ambassadors or embassies. For Israel, it's the it's not only the question anymore. We always thought that this would happen because people would feel embarrassed about the question,
especially in the United States, of the dual loyalty. It's not anymore the question of dual. It's actually a reassertion of young Jews of what they understood Judaism to be and what they understand Judaism to be forces them to totally be against Israel themselves. And this is something that nobody could have predicted would happen before. But the Israelis are responsible for it themselves with the policies that they implemented on the ground.
But this is an important process. And the last one is what's happening on the Palestinian side. Now, it's very clear that the present generation of Palestinian politicians and activists of a certain gender and age, if you want, are unable to unite around a vision, around the plan, even around a strategy. The classical organisations of the liberation movement are not functioning. And partly it is because of the objective fragmentation of the Palestinians.
So different groups by the by Zionism, but also the Palestinians have an interest in themselves and should criticise them for the lack of of doing this, even if there are very difficult objective circumstances that explain that.
But if you look if you remember that the Palestinian society is the youngest in the world, probably one of the youngest, if not the youngest then and you look at the way the younger Palestinian activists and groups are coordinating between themselves and the language that they use, you can see a far more consensual Palestinian voice and an ability to bridge over geographical barriers first, because of the Internet, of course, which the young, older generation Palestinians didn't have.
But also because of a certain worldview that is shared, whether you are in a refugee camp in Lebanon or you are living in Detroit, in the United States. And I think that although they have not yet found their organisation the way of doing it, namely, do they go into the PLO and renovate the PLO? Do they build a different kind of Palestinian organisation? It's very clear that the next be all of the renewed pillar would have to include Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
And I know this is recorded and I'm not violating the British designation of the Hamas, for goodness sakes. Okay. Okay. Well, not the don't worry. And all that oxygen is in trouble. I'm just saying that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad will have to be part of the next PLO as a second terrorist. Oh, no, this would have to happen. And this is going to it not for this generation, but for the next generation.
People. I don't know how. People do understand that people not only in Palestine, in the eastern Mediterranean, and not that worried about the risk between secular people and religious people. That from here may sound like a huge kind of clash of civilisation. Alan Huntington No, no, People are far more relaxed. I was a member of the Communist Party and half of our members of the Politburo went five times to prayer during the meetings and we got used to it.
We were totally useless and we even had the rabbi, the great Politburo of the Communist Party. We don't take these things neither things, neither side of the religion of communism or the religion of Islamism. Seriously. But but it's part of you know, it's part of an ecumenical framework that enable us to live together and respect each other, sensitivities and importance. And I do think that the younger generation represent this in a fine in this way.
Finally, let me say this. I want to repeat just one point, which I think is really, really important here. If if I'm even right about some of these processes, if not all of them, if the disintegration, the weaknesses, the weaknesses of Israel, the deficiencies are going to accelerate, increase in the future, they raise or they force many of us to focus not only on whether we want to buy a national state or the two states,
but all certain question. Now is the time to answer, to answer them, at least in the academia, or move the activist. Even if these answers are not yet translated into, you know, the the program of the new Palestinian National Movement or organisation, for example, I'll give you one example which is now beginning to emerge about the Palestinian citizens in Israel only for 48 hours can they still play on both political arenas.
Can they still be part of the Israeli political system and part of the Palestinian system that's quite weak. That's. Marwan Bishara That's a week we will talk about this, Talk about that. Very good. So I think I think I just raise it. There's a question, I'm not going to answer it. I think they have to make the decision. This bipolar ism of the 48 Arabs cannot continue and will not continue. And this will have a huge impact on the Palestinian. One second.
Now is the time to say within a one state solution, what would be the fate of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank? We cannot delay this conversation because it doesn't fit too well with a one state solution. But we have to talk about we have to find a way of of doing this. What will be the collective Jewish identity? It's time to talk about it. Talking about binational state kind of mesmerises us and does not allow us to face something that we will have to face.
That Zionism has failed to try to turn Judaism from a religion to nationals. It doesn't work. Is there any Jewish national identity that is not Zionist? Can there be a Jewish national identity in Palestine that is not Zionist? Because if it is Zionist then you don't have to talk about the one state solution. So I think it's time to think about a Jewish collective identity in the way the way to think about some other ethno cultural identities in the Eastern Mediterranean.
And that brings me to the fact that we should start and understand that not all the models for the future of Palestine are in the Western supermarket of ideas that must read the late Ottoman period. They have political examples that can inspire us not only to undo Zionism, but to undo the colonial structure that was imposed on the mushroom after the First World War.
We need to go back and study and do many of these studies, and Middle Eastern studies do not want to learn Ottoman Turkish, but it's important to go back to the Ottoman period, to go to this live and let live structure without idealising or romanticising the regimes of the Sultans. But to understand the balance between collective identities, state identities, supra, state identities, all these are not in the West fairly and Western idea.
Of the nation state. We need a different political structure for the Eastern Mediterranean. The western one is not working, and I don't have to be a prophet about it. Just look at Syria, Europe, and you understand them, unfortunately. And now Palestine and Israel. So all of this brings me to my final sentence. And this is that that whether we like the idea that Israel comes to an end, whether we drive the idea and the gentleman who left probably does.
No, I'm serious. I'm serious. You're back. I'm glad we got that question. That's very good. I'm eagerly waiting for the weather. This is the question we have to ask because this project is not working and we all, I think, share a wish to see if to replace it, something that would work for as many people as possible. I believe it's possible. We are not just onlookers, but we are also contributors to a different reality. Thank you.